


The End

by Whatevergirl



Series: A New Chance at Life [1]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whatevergirl/pseuds/Whatevergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arnold Rimmer has got two hobbies: art, and hanging out in stasis booths. They give him a rather important opportunity he may have otherwise missed if he had not had both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End

**Author's Note:**

> The idea came from reading the book Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. It's really not necessary to read the book though.
> 
> Later on, the series will become Lister/Rimmer, but we aren't there yet. 
> 
> I do apologise, but updates could be fairly slow; I have a busy life and I am also writing stories for Les Mis, Hawaii Five-0 and Brittas Empire

It had been one difference really, that sparked so many changes; one comment. If the comment had not been made, life for Arnold Rimmer would have been, in many ways, rather different. He still would have had ambitions to become an officer, he still would have tried desperately to study well, he still would have failed, he still would have joined the mining ship Red Dwarf and met his bunkmate first on Mimas (where he was posing as a taxi driver of a space hopper) and again later when the fellow joined the JMC to escape the moon.

There were numerous differences though. The first difference, and arguably the most important one, would be that Arnold Rimmer’s life did not revolve around becoming an officer. That wasn’t to say he had learnt how to interact with people; he still spent his spare time in stasis to avoid getting older when he wasn’t doing anything and so had never developed that particular skill.

He had another focus; art.

It had been Howard who had made the comment. He was the closest to Arnold in age, just six years older, and although he never really liked the runt of his family, he didn’t have a go at him unless someone else was around. 

One afternoon, while Arnold had been home from boarding school for the summer holidays, Howard had come across him in the second floor library. The older boy had been searching for some more in depth journals from the test pilots of the Global Astronautical Society (the early version of the Space Corps), but he had come across his younger brother doing his history homework.

The fourteen year old boy had made a beautiful poster, carefully drawing a Roman soldier in the foreground with a drawing of the Colosseum in the background. He was currently adding neat little bullet points over the top of his background drawing about the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman Empire.

“Wow.” Howard murmured as he peered over Arnold’s shoulder to get a better look. “Why are you studying astronomy and stuff when you’re so good at art?”

It was that comment that changed Arnold Rimmer’s life; the idea that someone thought he was good at art. At the time, he had simply turned to scowl at his brother, not really believing any compliment the man would give him, but feeling a need to answer regardless.

“I’m just finishing my homework. I have to get back to looking at those books.”

Those books, Howard mused, would likely be the law books his brother spent all his spare time scanning. Arnold wasn’t book smart. Things didn’t stick in the lad’s head, but he had notebooks filled with the stuff he needed for this; Arnold wanted to divorce their parents.

Howard understood what he was trying to do, to take himself away from those high expectations. It wouldn’t work in that respect; most of the time, Howard now lived on the heavily cratered Callisto. His home was small there, but he had access to the subsurface ocean and the atmosphere was slowly being changed to incorporate more oxygen as they raised the surface temperature. In the next decade or so, he'd be able to go outside without a spacesuit on.

The problem was that despite living on a different moon, he still felt the pressures of his parents’ expectations. He still looked at himself and wondered if he would ever be enough. He had, once or twice, considered inviting Arnold back to his home there when his school on Earth broke up for holidays, but he knew John and Frank would mock him for it. Besides, he planned to become a test pilot in the Space Corps, he had no problems with the exams, out of all his family he excelled the most in exams, but it was the interviews he struggled with.

They wanted their pilots to be good with people, all people of every type. He struggled with that. He wasn’t a people person. John was the closest the brothers had to a people person, but he reserved his charms for certain people... much like their mother in that respect.

Arnold though, wasn’t good with people, nor was he good with books, or exams. He was an honest young man, who hated lying and was, to be perfectly honest, terrible at it when he tried. The boy didn’t like people touching him and he was very fond of routine. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that he could vaguely remember their mother being pregnant with him, and if he didn’t have photos as evidence, he would have assumed Arnold was adopted. He was nothing like their mother who could easily hold onto several affairs and flirt with yet more men, she had a very carefree attitude to how she did things, so long as her sons were doing what she wanted them to.

“Arnold, you should take art next year.”

Even if Arnold got divorced, their parents would still have to pay for his schooling. Howard wasn’t sure where he would go in the holidays...

“You don’t become an officer by taking art.” Arnold replied, in a voice eerily like their father’s. It must have been when Arnold had been asking about what subjects to take last year.

“Surely you can spare one subject in your GCSEs for something you like?”

“I’ve got another year till then.” whispered Arnold. Howard frowned at the boy, wanting to say something comforting. He didn’t know what to say; he’d never had such a long civil conversation with the child and as he readily acknowledged, he wasn’t a good people person.

“Besides, can’t you use art to become a morale officer?” he tried, hoping this was a helpful thing to say.

“It won’t count for him though, will it?” Arnold went back to carefully writing out his notes onto the poster.

Howard stood and left, unaware of how this conversation would change his little brother’s future.

\------XXX------

Arnold Judas Rimmer, first technician on the JMC ship Red Dwarf had two hobbies. The first, his oldest, was art. He made beautiful watercolour paintings and sold them; he didn’t sell them for very much, because he really didn’t believe he was very good at it. This was a shame, because his painting could actually go for a lot of money if he sold them somewhere other than on Red Dwarf.

But he didn’t, so it would be pointless to think about it.

He saved the money he earned, planning to buy a house on Callisto. One of his brothers lived there, and since they had developed a life friendly atmosphere, the house prices had jumped. Arnold wanted to live there since he had been a teenager though, staying with Howard during the school breaks. 

Arnold Rimmer’s other hobby was spending time in stasis. You see, Arnold had a plan. It wasn’t some half formed plan; no, it was well thought out, with a diagram and a flow chart and everything. He planned to not exist through as much of his spare time as he could. Why should he waste away evenings when he could save that evening for another time? In the six years he had been on Red Dwarf, Arnold had saved over two years. His birth certificate said he was thirty one, but he had the body of a man _just_ over twenty nine.

It wasn’t as though he would spend those evenings with friends; he had none and he still had time for revision. True, it wasn’t as much revision as he would like to do, but a lot of his time was spent making revision posters for other people. He got paid for it, and he got to learn new stuff while he did it.

There were several exams Arnold could have passed if he had wanted to, including the chef’s exam. Olaf Peterson, a catering officer and the best friend of Arnold’s bunkmate, often got him to make revision posters for him. It wasn’t that Peterson paid him, but Arnold didn’t risk getting beat up when he did this, so it was a win really.

Arnold’s two hobbies helped save his life. The first was the main factor in it though. To Arnold, painting actually balanced out a lot of his stress; he was slightly less neurotic when he took the time to paint the things in his mind. It meant he relied less on superstitions than he might otherwise have done.

Because he relied less on superstitions, Arnold’s second hobby helped save his life.

When Arnold had heard that David Lister, his inadequate bunkmate, was about to sent the rest of the trip in stasis, he was most put out. It wasn’t that Arnold Rimmer was sad to lose him bunkmate, but the man would be saving three whole years of his life. Lister was only two weeks shy of turning twenty five! He already had four years on Rimmer, (who did not like to count the time he had been a non-being as... well, time) and he was about to gain another three.

He had been in the medibay after his Astronavigation exam when he had been told. The exam hadn’t been particularly successful. Arnold had managed to stay pretty relaxed for it, sitting and staring at the paper. There had even been a question he had known the answer to, unfortunately you had to answer five altogether. He had drawn a beautiful diagram to answer question two, smudged a bit of ink over the other four questions, before signing his name and fainting.

It was a bit irksome that he fainted during his exams. The five previous Astronavigation exams he had sat had all ended in a similar state. He was a little ashamed to say he had only sat six of them, but he had spent a set amount of time in stasis and the rest was spent drawing and painting. He’d get the hang of exams eventually...

When he had woken up, someone had mentioned to him to not worry that his bunkmate was no longer there because the young man had gotten himself put into stasis for the next three years.

Arnold had not been happy. Three years? Did Lister know how hard he had worked to save two? And he just got three, out of nowhere? It was probably because of that smegging cat the idiot had picked up when they had stopped at Miranda. 

While Arnold had been heading to the other stasis booth to save as much of his time as he could, Navigation Officer Henri DuBois spilt his coffee over his keyboard in the Drive Room. He mistakenly assumed that was the cause of the warning lights on his screen. 

When the cadmium II coolant system stopped working, deep inside the ship, it went unnoticed. When the cadmium II core reached critical mass, killing nearly everyone on Red Dwarf in the next few seconds, only two people were out of harm’s way:

Lister, who had been sealed in a stasis booth by Todhunter earlier in the day and Arnold Rimmer, who had just sealed himself in the other one.  
It was possible that in a universe where Arnold had been more focussed on superstitions, that he hadn’t made it to the booth in time. It was possible that there was a universe where Arnold had been distracted from hurrying to the stasis booth by trying to chuck a paper towel he had scrunched into a ball into the bin; where he had been using this method to decide if he could one day become an officer, much in the same way preteens sometimes pulled petals off daisies to decide if someone liked them or not.

 

However, that universe, if it existed, was not this one. In this one, the paper towel Arnold Rimmer used to dry his hands after he had wet them to try and fix his hair went straight into the bin. He strolled confidently down the corridor and into the stasis booth. He told the computer to leave him in stasis for the evening, as usual and pulled the door shut. 

One minute and twenty three point four seconds later, a nuclear wind roared down the corridor with all the power of a neutron star. 

Holly debated waking Arnold up a few hours later, but as he was in the middle of speeding Red Dwarf as far away from the Solar System as possible to avoid spreading nuclear contamination, he decided to wake David Lister and Arnold Rimmer up at the same time, when it was safe for them to emerge.


End file.
